Re: [ANN] SmartGWT 2.0 Released

It's only because our plans are for our product to be open source, and while PRO may indeed work better out of the box, it creates licensing conflicts to include a large commercial component that would affect both the client and server code.  The LGPL widgets definitely are winners.

Unfortunately, we have also noted a condescending attitude in many forum replies, no doubt the result of dealing with so many newbies like myself who are trying to figure it all out so we can make the most informed decision possible.

The one downside I see for the product -- ironically enough -- is that it seems to support so many options that it's much harder to evaluate and discern what goes with what or how to put it all together if you are taking a particular approach.  It is great that it supports these myriad features and options, don't get me wrong, but it is quite an experience trying to get through all the material, all the various samples (many of which won't apply to our situation), and trying to select which approach to take, wondering if there are efficient trade-offs, etc.  All these product variations (LGPL, PRO, Power, EE), GWT-vs-JS libraries and documentation and samples, and options may seem clear to you, but they most definitely are not to newbies.

We are having trouble finding a clear path for users like us who will be using the GUI to interface with an established Java framework that has public interfaces for all clients implemented with Java objects that themselves handle all of the persistence, security enforcement, etc. so that the GUI calls the same interfaces available to other non-browser systems that may just want to use HTTP POST of name-value pairs, or perhaps SOAP, or perhaps just posting XML/REST, iPhone/smartphone, etc.

There's even questions about how the LGPL version numbers match the EE version numbers, how to test drive the latest PRO without having access to the other features and documentation that only adds to our confusion, and one feature we thought would be a huge boost, the visual builder, does not appear to generate s'gwt code yet.

So that is why we investigate our options as we eval the new 2.0 widgets and look forward to the new PRO 2.0 release to demo that incorporates them, etc.  After all, much of the discussion about the troubles of using DTOs may be resolved using more flexible HashMaps interfaces which GWT-RPC can transmit easily.  Trust me, I wish it were easier to evaluate since that would make my job easier.

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